The Spits' self-titled nine-track mini-album -- the one on Dirtnap Records with the '50s vintage girl-and-robot cover photo, not to be confused with a similarly titled release on Nickel and Dime, also nine tracks long, that came out the same year -- sounds like what would happen if the
Cocteau Twins'
Robin Guthrie had produced an album by a circa-1978 U.K. power pop band along the lines of the Records or the early
Undertones. The songs are one to two-minute blurts of punky ramalama, with only the opening "Witch Hunt" stretching out past the three-minute mark, and only then because of an extended intro that sounds like something out of a bad '50s drive-in flick. The production, however, takes these songs and douses them in so much reverb and echo that it at times sounds as if the band is playing while trapped in the bottom of a large galvanized steel water tank. Actually, this suits the songs perfectly well, and the brief album is quite entertaining. ~ Stewart Mason